psuhoffman

For the others in the same snow hole as me... keep that in mind. Think about 2010 when every single storm jacked us...think about 2011 when we got jacked by the January storm and also had a nice Feb storm that VA and DC missed out on. Think about all those waves in 2014 and 2015 that jacked our area! The 2016 HECS! We had a run! Even going back before that northeast MD did a lot better in the Feb 2006 storm and a couple of the 2005 storms! We were in a positive snow anomaly for a long time. We are paying the devil his due now. It will flip back again. Hopefully sooner rather then later.

Great post thanks Bob. And I agree with all of this...and am generally optimistic for the next few years. But I'll admit this season (and the last few) have been really hard to swallow. My location has not been "almost acceptable" were in the epicenter of a multi year snow hole. But I know its just short range variance in longer range cycles. I was the epicenter of a positive snow anomaly from 2010-2016. I was going to have to pay up for that eventually.

BTW the GFS had the snowiest bias overall in terms of the amount of times throughout the year it showed too much snow...but suprisingly the EURO was the worst in terms of raw totals because a few times it teased us with some absolutely ridiculous amount of snow from an over amplified storm that ended up OTS. Sound familiar. lol

I mean it's funny but it is a simple fact the models are ALL biased too snowy for our area. It's not as bad as we think because we are biased to remember the runs that show snow and not all the runs that do not. Like 4-5 years ago I did that seasonal study to see, where I used specific points in time once a week to verify a 10 day, 5 day and 3 day forecast. And while its probably not as bad as we imagined, they did all show too much snow over the course of the season. The 10 day was the worst obviously. But the models across the board have a snowy bias. @Ji loves that since he only cares about digital blue anyways

A couple years ago I asked this and was told they are were developing a new short range system but have been running into issues. It's been a while but this was what I think I remember... Originally the HRRR was supposed to be part of that process but that was scrapped. I think it was the HREF. I think they started a new experimental system but not sure if its close to being ready. They might simply be scrapping the NAM without any replacement.

Actually come to think of it...I can think of a ton of examples for almost every model where it was all by itself in showing no snow for us...and ended up right but almost no examples the other way around. For whatever reason the models seem to have a much higher verification score when they are all by themselves showing no snow, than when they are on their own showing snow.

@stormtracker I can think of several times the NAM was all by itself and won...but every single one was a case where it was by itself showing less or no snow lol. March 2017 was another example...it sniffed out that the primary was going to hang on way too long and we would get a ton of sleet not snow. And it was showing that for a while before other guidance caught on. I can think of several cases where it was the first to show us getting screwed and was right.

Is the Nina one is like the opposite lol

It did once in 2007 or 2008. Every single model was showing a 3-6” snow from a little boundary wave at only 24 hours out. And the NAM had nothing. The wave never developed and it shows just some snow showers. NAM was right. There was no wave.

Problem is nothing is 100%. Not every season has a consistent pattern and there are anomalies even within seasons that do. Examples 2015 the snow jack zone suddenly shifted to us mid Feb after being in New England. 2014 those two snows in March jacked VA after the whole season was jacking MD and southern PA. 2018 I was in the snow hole then got a 14” storm. There is something to persistence but without knowing when it’s about to end or which storms are the anomalies it’s hard to use it effectively.

I can’t find it. It used to be up somewhere on the web. Maybe someone knows who produced it or how to recreate it.

So this is semantics but I do think important distinction for any newbies. What I think you’re calling “memory” is actually seasonal pattern tendencies. In this case, a Nina background state with a somewhat stronger NS and weaker SS. The result of that is weaker SS waves that don’t phase and come north and NS waves that fly by to our north and a gap in between.

This years snow hole looks about like the Nina snow anomaly map. Just worse and it extends northeast more because we never got the 1-2 typical Nina miller b storms that save NYC-Boston. But not sure this should be all that shocking. Nina’s often have a snow hole between where the southern and southern streak storms set up and it’s often over Maryland northwest of the bay.

Look at that beautiful snowhole on the gfs

Right where we want it

I agree with your point about making predictions on unrealistic time leads. But I don’t get your NHC point. Their avg error at 5 days is over 150 miles. It’s that about what the error here was? How is this any different?

When this was a week out the N American H5 was pretty darn close to some of our biggest snows. In the last few days some of the finer details trended the wrong way. A kicker showed up to flatten the PNA. The ULL trended more positively tilted and the flow in front more suppressive. The SS wave isn’t amplified enough. But isnt it hindsight now to say “we should have seen those changes coming”. Now it’s already a good idea to bet against a HeCs bc they’re so rare. But it’s not like people were excited at one of those times the models spit out some ridiculous storm despite every h5 indicator being all wrong. We have a retrograding west based block. It liked like a nice pna ridge for a time before the kicker came along. 50/50 retreating and a ULL digging west of us. Most of the ingredients were actually there this time but the details went all wrong. I don’t think this was a case of blindly following models when they made no sense. I thought this window had potential before the models showed a storm bc the pattern was pretty good. We don’t get a -5stdv AO often!

Fits analogs. I said it either had to come north or be squashed because that’s what every comp did. I just thought it would be north.

Some of its bad luck. But if you look at Nina snow anomalies Baltimore is ground zero for the snow minimum wrt climo. Snow wrt climo increases sharply across the bay on the Delmarva and increases more gradually to the NW. And we’ve been in a Nina type base state for a while. Even in non Nina years. The issue with these Nina like cold wave patterns is when the waves amplify at all or phase some they track north of us. When they don’t amplify they get suppressed south. I don’t think that’s totally chance. I think we are in a dead zone for those waves between the more amplified ones and suppressed ones. That’s why I want a return of the pattern from 2000-2016 where we had a lot more amplified coastal storms each winter. We can definitely get snow in that look but it’s really hard to get a big snowstorm in that look. And it’s way too late to save this god awful disaster up here with anything short of a MECS to end the season, the way 2018 was similarly saved and went from a F to a B winter for me purely bc of a 14” snow in March! Similar winter in that we missed a couple storms to the SE and went into March at like 50% of climo! A couple 3” snows won’t change my opinion of this winter. I’m big game hunting now. Only a wall trophy storm saves this mess.

The analogs are going to be right but in the other way. I was looking for Richmond to Delmarva big snows. I found none of them with a similar h5. I wasn’t even considering it would go south and be a Va beach snow. When I pulled those up….there were some matches. You don’t see many in between. With a TPV there it either phases and comes up or doesn’t and gets squashed way south.

No better would be it comes north then keeps going and we rain

We start the comeback tonight

@Terpeast obviously we’ve talked about our degrading snow climo, but there is an oddity within the trends. It’s enso neutral winters that have been killing is. Enso neutral winters used to be pretty snowy. Actually if you go back far enough there wasn’t much difference between neutral and Nino wrt snowfall. Nino snowfall actually hasn’t declined at all, but it has become more variable with bigger highs (2010) and more duds (2024). La Niña snowfall hasn’t declined much either. It was always bad and remains bad. But enso neutral winters have joined Nina’s more and more and now over the last 20 years are just as bad! Losing enso neutral winters as “snowy” is the biggest part of our snowfall loss. Just to clarify enso neutral was never all snowy but it was half and half. Kinda a crap shoot. Lately it’s more 80/20 bad.

If next winter ends up enso neutral our fate is probably hanging on whether the PDO is actually flipping. +pdo neutral winters can be pretty good -pdo ones have been god awful lately!

2004 there was a storm like this that trended worse until there was no storm anywhere. Or maybe some snow in NC. I stopped following it once it got that bad.